17 comments
:

Now a question, how do books get made into movies? Not the obvious way, I mean who gets to choose what books get made into movies and what criteria needs to be met before somebody says "okay, this would be great as a movie because these 120 pages needs pictures of explosions otherwise I... people will get bored and I'm a bigshot movie producer so I know everything about movies - now where's that script for Meet The Spartans 2?" and all that other stuff.

Well I couldn't resist clicking on the link to revisit Stage Moms and my - ah - reasoned discussion with Mother DeGarmo. Ah, good times.

A week or two back I had an old AMERICAN IDOL rerun ("Rewind" they call it) playing on my TV while I typed something, and I happened to see Diana DeGarmo's original audition. At the end of the episode, there was a shot of Diana hugging her mom, and I got my first-ever glimpse of Mother DeG. Yikes! I'm glad our spat was on the internet as, though she's clearly 6 to 8 inches shorter than I am, I'm fairly certain she outweighs me by a large margin.

But I was still let down, as she wasn't multi-tasking. From her posts, I'd assumed she would be hugging her daughter while also ironing laundry, networking on the phone, helping out at an AIDS PETS charity function, sewing a costume, grading Diana's term papers, learning a foreign language, writing LES MISERABLES ("What do you mean Victor Hugo already wrote it? DON'T YOU DARE CRITICIZE ME!"), driving her son to football practise, filling in for Michael Phelp's mother at The Olympics, and "doing my life." I guess it was a slow day.

I just clicked on the AMERICAN IDOL column link. The next time someone accuses you of egotism, just point to how you linked for review a column that opened with you incorrectly predicting who would win AI.

George Bush wuold be telling interviewers how he predicted David Cook right from the start, and if anyone showed him tape of him saying David Archulta would win, he'd just say it was "Bad Intelligence."

Just reread your Disneyland post. There was a certain amount of discussion in the comments about the ride-stalling problem on IT'S A SMALL WORLD because overweight riders were making the boats bottom out.

I revisited the park a few weeks ago. (A friend gave me annual pass for a present. COOL!) I rode the revamed IT'S A SMALL WORLD ride. The solution they came up with to the too-many-fatties-making-the-ride-stall problem was to make new, smaller boats, all out of light-weight fiberglass. Now they have fewer people on each boat, plus the boats themselves weigh less, so the bottoming out problem is lessened.

Normally riding IT'S A SMALL WORLD ranks right above waterboarding as an aquatic form of torture, what with that endlessly repeated, monotonous song. Back when they had ticket books, the E Ticket said right on it: "Subjecting an unwilling person to riding IT'S A SMALL WORLD is a violation of The Geneva Conventions." But at the moment, it has been done up for the holidays, and instead of The Sherman Brothers' musical horror, they are playing a variety of secular Christmas songs - all different ones, not just Jingle Bells played over and over.

BUT the holiday overlay on the ride has got to be offensive to any non-Christian. You sail all over the world, and EVERYONE IN THE WHOLE WORLD IS CELEBRATING CHRISTMAS!!!

There they are in Saudi Arabia, celebrating Christmas! No pesky Muslims in the Arab countries on this ride! There they are celebrating Christmas in India, in Israel, in China, in Japan, all over Africa! I don't know how the Muslim woman seated behind me in the boat resisted standing up and yelling, "This is very offensive!" through her bhurka. They might as well have been singing:

It's a Christian World after all.It's a Christian World after all.It's a Christian World after all.It's a Christ- ian World!

But if the Christers were bound to be happy to see all those other belief systems wiped out of existence by singing doll robots, over at The Haunted Mansion they were probably shrieking in horror and clamping their hands over their kids' ears and eyes, because the vastly-more-entertaining holiday overlay on that attraction was all themed to the charming Tim Burton animated musical THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS.

Jack Skellington and the denizens of Halloweentown run rampant all over Christmas there, this Holy Christian day being defiled and mocked by witches, wizards, devils, mad scientists, and demons from hell, and it's all a big laugh. It's delightfully sacrilegious. I loved it.

Tallulah rants on this at somewhat greater length (With photographic evidence) on her posting "Old Holiday Chestnuts" over on her blog.

Just reread the writer's block post, which is timely since I'm struggling with finishing a draft of a story. Sometimes when I have writer's block I listen to Tom Lehrer's "Lobachevsky" for inspiration.

I've thoroughly enjoyed reading this blog all year. Thanks for some terrific posts, Ken, and extra thanks to all the commenters for all their additional hilarity. Reading this blog and the comments is a terrific time waster and keeps me laughing. Both worthy pursuits! I look forward to more fun in 2009. Your American Idol recaps almost make me want to watch the show. Almost.

Thank you again for blogging in the first place. My new year's resolution is to be more honest and admit to the guys at work this is the reason I'm late again. That car trouble crap is getting kind of old.

Is this the blog equivalent of those flashback episodes that some sitcoms do? "Remember when Bill went into the wrong house at 2am and was wounded by Jeff's pit bull?" shimmer shimmer shimmer shimmerflashback.

Of course, while we recognize those episodes as the laziest of techniques to avoid coming up with new content, this blog entry is nothing of the sort, and is of course a nostalgic look back at a great year of blogging. Um, isn't it?

Thank you, Ken, for a daily dose of laughter and for creating your own little blog community. I like hanging out in Levine Land where you're the funniest blogger around and you also have some of the most interesting, funny, blog readers leaving comments. If read the blog post in the morning and then usually check back on a break during the day just to see what everybody else has said.

About KEN LEVINE

Named one of the BEST 25 BLOGS by TIME Magazine. Ken Levine is an Emmy winning writer/director/producer/major league baseball announcer. In a career that has spanned over 30 years Ken has worked on MASH, CHEERS, FRASIER, THE SIMPSONS, WINGS, EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND, BECKER, DHARMA & GREG, and has co-created three series. He and his partner wrote the feature VOLUNTEERS. Ken has also been the radio/TV play-by-play voice of the Baltimore Orioles, Seattle Mariners, San Diego Padres. and Dodger Talk. He hosts the podcast HOLLYWOOD & LEVINE

Ken Being Social

Ken's Book Club

A collection of long-form Levine

MUST KILL TV: Ken's explosive and hilarious satire of the TV industry - now in paperback and Kindle